So yesterday the choir was waiting in the hallway adjacent to the church for the organ prelude to end and the clergy to show up, before going in to Mass. Oddly enough, at this church (only God and the Rector know why), the last Sunday before Lent is celebrated with great hoopla. The Gospel reading is about the Transfiguration, so maybe that's it. Maybe it's just Fat Sunday. As I say, there's no knowing for sure.

T, who's always around the church doing something or another, and is full of wry humor, got into a discussion about the collision of various holidays this year. Chinese New Year (happy that, if you're celebrating!), Quinquagesima (final Sunday before Lent, see above under hoopla), "some minor saint's day" (that'd be Valentine, about whom nothing is known but a name in an ancient martyrology), Dead Presidents Day (a.k.a. the Feast of Saints George and Abraham) and the Winter Olympics.

The clergy arrived, wearing their gold-colored vestments. T gets a gleam in his eye, and proposes a set of vestments. For the priest, gold. For the deacon, silver. For the subdeacon, bronze. Decorated across the backs with five staggered interlocking rings. For the Feast of the Holy Olympics.

Also yesterday, a scheme I've been scheming for some time came to fruition. We have a small bread machine (makes cute little half-sized loaves), given to us as a wedding present. We used it a lot, sometimes for baking and sometimes just for mixing and rising, before dividing the dough to make buns or rolls or something. The recipes that come with the machine come put pretty sweet; perhaps there's not enough time in the machine cycle for the yeast to consume all the sugar or something. So I'd been thinking I should try making bread, myself, without benefit of machine, and see how it goes, with an eye to adjusting the recipe to suit.

So toxicfur recently bought a copy of this cookbook, which does a pretty good job of explaining what-all needs doing and why. So I cobbled together a recipe for sandwich bread with a couple cups of whole wheat flour and the rest bread flour, mixed, kneaded, allowed to rise, divided, allowed to rise a bit further. Turns out I put a bit less material in the larger of the two loaf pans, so that loaf took longer to rise and didn't get very big. But the bread is pretty tasty, and should provide foundation material for sandwiches for the coming week. It stuck a bit to the sides of the pans, but I'm thinking a more uniform (and poossibly generous) application of oil to the pans before putting the loaves in might fix that.

A+, would try again.

Elsewhere it's been told that we went to see Tegan and Sara on Saturday night. Much fun was had, though I still find this rock concert phenomenon a bit alien. Good company, good music (what I could hear of it [you baby dykes get off my lawn. And turn that down.]).

And I'm beginning to get the hankering to be writing again. I have a pretty solid set of ideas for the next draft, so perhaps soon-ish.

that the Tegan and Sara concert was actually mentioned anywhere around these parts before.

D mentioned that he was amused/annoyed by the way that they (I think Sara in particular) kept talking as if they were so old ("Do you guys know what X is?") Then again, we discovered them back in their late teens, so they do seem like perpetual baby dykes to us.

(Fritz the kid tried to pull off the "get off my lawn" line the other day at work. Um, no.)

Anyway, thanks for coming out with us, even though we didn't get to hang out as much as we wanted, due to the confluence of holidays.

is 24, and tries to pull that line off from time to time. It's amusing, though, because it actually makes sense in context. --
The amount of suck that you can put up with can be mind-boggling, but it only really hits you when it then ceases to suck. -- Kellnerin

For a full size loaf (15oz flour, 60% wholemeal/granary and 40% white) in my machine I use half a teaspoon of sugar. It will work without any though doesn't rise enough to suit my tastes. Anything more than that sort of ratio is being done purely for taste and not because it's necessary. Try cutting it down, you may also need to put in a bit more flour or a bit less water to rebalance.

This one. It's fine for what it does: make half-sized loaves, if you don't mind a little flaw in the bottom where the paddle is during baking.

My brother, who gave us this one, has a full-sized one (he also has 3 kids) and uses it regularly. It can be cool to use the machine to mix dough, lit it rise, etc. and then take it out and make rolls or buns or something and bake them in the oven. He uses his to make pizza dough, for example.

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